Biden and Trump contest offers Kenyan parties food for thought

Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves the stage during a commercial break as he participates in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections with US President Joe Biden at CNN's studios in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. [AFP]

Kenya is in such a depressing state that maintaining sanity demands occasional focus elsewhere, even if for just a moment.

In any event there are monumental occurrences happening in other jurisdictions that will have implications on our country. In this spirit, this column momentarily focuses away from Kenya this week to the United States of America which holds its elections in four months.

Currently, the candidates for the presidency are former President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden. Until the CNN televised debate on June 27th, doubts about the health and cognitive acuity of President Biden had only been whispered in corridors, the exception being Trump who had expressly signaled it as a weakness and a focus of his campaign.

During the debate, it became obvious that Biden has significant health and cognitive challenges. For those that support the congenial and honourable old man, watching him get confused, lose track of his thoughts and freeze at some points was excruciating.

Van Jones, a long time CNN commentator and Democratic supporter summed it all, expressing his love for Biden but indicating he was filled with not just pain but panic and that Biden “should consider taking a different course”.

The Democrats have a difficult season. Fortunately for them, their convention is still six weeks away, and between now and then they can decide on a new candidate and present him or her at the convention. Whether they have the capacity to unite the party, firstly to agree on Biden’s exit and, secondly, on a new candidate is the million-dollar question.

Biden has been good for the party because he occupies the centre left and hence acquires more moderate votes than Trump. Interestingly, despite Biden’s poor showing at the debate, there are many loyalists who believe that he can win, purely by pointing to the danger posed by Trump.

Many of them argue that this was just a bad night for the President which should not be used to wipe off his long track record. This point is being emphasized more especially after the Trump friendly Supreme Court this week gave Presidents a virtual carte blanche immunity for acts done in the course of official duties.

This decision shields Trump from any possible prosecution for the January 6 insurrection, since he was still President and so will argue he was carrying out official duties. The argument by the Democrats is that a health-challenged Biden is still better than Trump especially now that the Supreme Court has removed all constitutional guardrails.

This approach presents a risky gamble by the Biden camp. It may lead to many Democrat leaning voters to either not turn up to vote or to vote for a third-party candidate, rather than imagine the Biden of debate night, becoming not just America’s President but also Putin and Xi-Jinping’s contestant and  leader of the free world.

Fortunately, the objective portion of the party, which includes the silent majority, knows if their candidate is Joe Biden they will most probably lose to Trump, unless a miracle happens between now and November. What implications and lessons does this have for Kenya?

Firstly, we need to start preparing for a possible Trump presidency. While American policy to Africa does not fundamentally shift between presidents, there will definitely be less focus on Africa in a Trump presidency.

Funding for traditional programs, especially on governance, that have defined US involvement in Africa, could wane.

But there is also another lesson for Kenya; our politics should be more proactive in preparing for succession. The problem with the Democratic Party was the refusal to see beyond Biden.

In Kenya, the silent crisis in ODM, with Raila Odinga’s exit from national politics, points to the failure to adequately prepare for succession.

A similar ailment affects Wiper Party. I hope UDA is taking notes. In the absence of such preparation, succession-related civil wars within the party could prejudice a party’s political fortunes and get it exiting the political scene before its time.

That is not good for our young democracy. As the difficult process of building our democracy progresses, we wish Joe Biden good health. He represents the kind of decency in politics that is quickly becoming a distant memory.

-The writer is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya